


my nightmares are usually about losing you

by plinys



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, M/M, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-26 05:40:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20737109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: In which, Richie has a nightmare about Derry, but Eddie is there to bring him back to himself.





	my nightmares are usually about losing you

**Author's Note:**

> im sure a bunch of people have already written something like this, but i needed a warm up for a longer fic im working on and this hit 1k words so im posting it up here
> 
> also wow i havent been this inspired to write in such a long time

_ There’s so much blood. _

_ Blood staining his finger tips, blood that isn’t his own. _

_ There’s too much, it’s all too much, and a rational part of his brain knows that there’s no easy way to survive this, that losing someone down here was always a possibility but why did it have to be him, why couldn’t it be-  _

“Richie?” 

_ There’s other things he should be worrying about.  _

_ A battle that is being waged. _

_ But he can’t tear his eyes away, as though if he were to look away for one moment, he might let the last moments slip away. He might see those eyes slip shut, those lungs fail to take one last struggling breath. _

_ “What? What is it buddy?”  _

_ He wants to tell him not to speak, to save his energy, but he can’t make the words come out. Instead, he watches as blood stained lips try to form those familiar words and-  _

_ “ _ Richie! Wake up!”

_ Those aren’t the right words.  _

Somehow,  _ those  _ words, and that voice cuts through the panicked fog in his head, just enough to pull him back from the edge. To have Richie’s eyes snapping open, the feeling of sadness and stress, replaced instead with the panicked high of coming down from a nightmare.

Rationally, he had known that it was a dream.

It’s always the same dream. Over and over again, night after night, ever since they left Derry. A part of him almost wishes that the curse or whatever the fuck it was that made them all forget was still in effect. If only to save him from waking up more often than not with his heart beating too fast and the panic that he had not been quick enough, not been able to do enough, still there in the back of his mind. 

His bedroom is too dark, and for a second in the darkness he could swear that it is just his mind playing tricks on him again. That all of this is just another hallucination that It has created to tortune him and that a second later everything will fall away and he will be right back in that nightmare again.

“Richie, breathe,” that voice, the voice that had pulled him back from the edge. “You just had a bad dream, baby.” 

He does as the voice says.

Taking in one steady breath after another. 

Until his heart calms down.

Until his brain stops playing tricks on him.

Until he can finally manage to speak and - “Did you just call me  _ baby _ ?” 

He blinks through the darkness, through the blurriness in his vision, to make as much of the features as he can of the man next to him. It’s a face he would know anywhere, a face that looks to be in a lot better condition and covered in a lot less blood now in the real world.

“My bad,” Eddie corrects himself, and Richie can just make out the hint of a small smile on his lips. Lips that if Richie really wanted to he could lean forward and kiss, morning breath be damned. “You just had a bad dream,  _ fuckface _ .” 

“There we go, that’s more like it.”

He doesn’t have to ask what the dream was about.

They both know.

The same thing that has been haunting them every since they left Derry.

Ever since they were kids.

Now, It’s just in his nightmares. Not real. Nothing more than a lingering fear that comes back to haunt him whenever he closes his eyes. Worrying that he might lose the one good thing in his life all over again. 

He won’t.

Richie knows this now in the wakeful world.

He can feel Eddie there, alive and well enough, next to him in a bed that they share, in Richie’s LA apartment, as far from Derry as they can possibly be. Safe and sound. 

Eddie’s hand takes his, because he knows. Because they’ve done this enough times by now. Both of them fucked up beyond repair, but at least they’re both able to put each other back together again. Richie can’t imagine where he would be without Eddie beside him. 

If those nightmares were real… 

Thankfully he doesn’t have to.

Eddie moves Richie’s hand to his chest, to feel his head beating there through the thin layers of his sleep shirt. Proof that he is alive, and well, and in Richie’s life, as he was always meant to be. 

For now, this is enough.

To know that Eddie is alive.

To know that he wasn’t too late. 

When his fingers tighten against the sleep shirt, careful still, because the wounds may be mostly healed but the scars remain, to tug Eddie forwards to cross the distance between them, and kiss him. There’s tears in Richie’s eyes that he will deny if they get pointed out, that he would deny into his last breath. But this more than anything is proof that his nightmares can’t hurt him. 

Not anymore. 

When they pull back to breathe, neither of them are really willing to let go of the other, to put any space between them. 

That is until Richie moves to kiss him again, and Eddie turns his face just such that the kiss lands against his cheek instead. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Eddie shifts back so that their eyes can meet and says, “If you’re going to keep kissing me, you need to brush your teeth.” 

Richie laughs at that. 

“I mean, it’s not like you’re going to go back to sleep anyways,” Eddie adds

Forgetting all about his nightmare for a moment, as his eyes flick towards the clock, that flashes back at him with the early hour of  _ 3:46 am _ , too early to get up and start his day, but not late enough that Richie can really convince himself the risk of another nightmare is worth trying to make himself fall asleep. 

Especially not if there was another offer on the table. 

“Come on, Eds, let’s go brush our teeth like whole ass fucking adults before I fuck you,” Richie says, before laughing a little at his own joke. “Ha, get it, _ass fucking_.” 

Eddie groans. “God, can you shut the fuck up, you just killed the whole fucking mood.”

“Love you too, fuckface.” 


End file.
